Obama’s North Korea Mention Gets Reaction — In Seoul Not Pyongyang

Except for when it launches a missile or sets off a nuclear explosive, North Korea rarely rises to the importance of being discussed in public by the president of the United States.

So when President Barack Obama mentioned it during a speech in Myanmar earlier this week, he got some attention in the South Korean media and officialdom — but so far, not any reaction from North Korea.

Getty Images

U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned North Korea during this speech at the University of Yangon on Monday.

Mr. Obama visited Myanmar to praise the efforts taken so far by its military government to reform its politics and economy, and to encourage more such action. As such reforms unfolded, the U.S. restored diplomatic relations and began to offer economic aid to Myanmar.

Advertisement

The U.S., and most other free nations, hold hopes for similar changes in North Korea, which continues to be led by an authoritarian regime whose official economic and governing policy is known as “military first.”

In a speech at the University of Yangon, Mr. Obama referred to North Korea with the same metaphor that he did when he took office in 2008, when he said, “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

In the speech Monday, he said, “And here in Rangoon, I want to send a message across Asia: We don’t need to be defined by the prisons of the past. We need to look forward to the future. To the leadership of North Korea, I have offered a choice: let go of your nuclear weapons and choose the path of peace and progress. If you do, you will find an extended hand from the United States of America.”

In South Korea, the statement was seen as a sign that Mr. Obama in his second term may take a greater interest in the inter-Korean standoff and make a new or different effort to halt North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Hankyoreh, a newspaper in Seoul that favors engagement and outreach to Pyongyang, said it “may be profound in meaning depending on how it is interpreted.”

U.S. efforts to reach out to North Korea during the Obama administration were quickly met with resistance in Pyongyang. North Korea tested a nuclear explosive shortly after Mr. Obama took office in 2009. And when the U.S. earlier this year appeared to have an agreement to re-start humanitarian assistance to North Korea, Pyongyang a few weeks later fired a long-range missile.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Kim Jong Eun visited the Ministry of State Security on Tuesday, in a photo taken by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

North Korean state media have issued no reaction to Mr. Obama’s statement.

But for a sign of how far apart Washington and Pyongyang are in the way they approach each other, one need only look at a report in North Korea’s largest newspaper published Monday morning, before Mr. Obama’s speech.

It said, “The U.S. warmongers are seeking to invade the DPRK with south Korea as a military stronghold and a springboard. Their aim is to control the neighboring countries of the DPRK and put Northeast Asia under their military control.”

DPRK is the abbreviation for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the official name of North Korea.

The newspaper called on the U.S. to create a peace treaty with North Korea and withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea and the Asia-Pacific region. “The nuclear issue of the peninsula will be settled” after the U.S. “abandons its hostile policy,” the newspaper added.